


Coming Home For Christmas

by DaemonRose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen, Spoilers, death in heaven, series 8 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 18:06:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2591123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaemonRose/pseuds/DaemonRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Clara reunite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alone

Every morning Clara gets up, gets dressed and goes to work. But the first day is the worst because Danny isn’t there. Everyone knows he died but no one knows what really happened, no one would ever know that he had sacrificed himself to save the world. Clara has to bite back the tears as she walks down the hall filled with students and teachers. They look at her but she ignores them. She’s relieved when she finally can go home, make some tea and curl up in her bed. She has never felt so alone. Danny is gone, She knows he is gone for good and that she can’t ever see him again.

What is worst is that the Doctor is gone too. He is out there somewhere and she doesn’t know if she will ever see him again.

Clara sobs and pulls her arms around herself tighter. She hopes the Doctor is happy back home on Gallifrey. She imagines how he will walk his orange home planet, finally meet other timelords again and she hopes he will lose all this anger and sadness in him.

That’s the thoughts that help her falling asleep every night.

Any other time of the day she tries not to think about the Doctor and how much she misses him. How much she misses to travel with him. To run with him.

When she awakes on Christmas morning she isn’t very motivated to get up. It’s not that she doesn’t like to spend Christmas with her family but they ask so many questions about what she is doing and she can’t tell them much except about her work. She can’t tell them about her time with the Doctor and now her life is boring. Also, they would ask her how she’s dealing with Danny's death and that’s something she doesn't want to talk about either.

So she just lies in bed and wishes that she could go back to sleep again. She is nearly drifting off as a strange but yet familiar sound startles her. Clara sits upright in her bed and when the sound has trailed off she bolts to the door. Right in front of it she stops.

He would know that she lied to him. Well, it shouldn’t bother him, the one who can lie better than anyone. Before she knows it she opens the door and hugs the Doctor.

 

 


	2. Home

 

It is awkward. It is always awkward, but right now it doesn’t matter. The Doctor came back to her. It is Clara’s first impulse to hug him. She doesn’t know how much time has passed already, it doesn’t matter. The Doctor shifts slightly, his hands stop rubbing over her back.

“Just a second,” Clara mutters, her face is buried against his neck. “I know you’re not a hugging person now.But I need this.”

She feels the small smile that appears on his face. Eventually she lets go and the Doctor scratches his head a little embarrassed.

“Hello, Clara.”

“You came back.”

“Well, yes.” He shrugs.

“So, how’s Gallifrey?”

The Doctor tenses, doesn’t look at her.

“Great. Yes, it’s great.”

He tries to smile, but fails.

Clara frowns.

“Good.”

The Doctor looks around.

“Where is Danny?”

Now Clara tenses, but doesn’t look away.

“Not here.”

The Doctor glances at her and  frowns, trying to figure out what she means. Clara holds his stare, she knows he sees right through her.

“He didn’t make it back.”

It isn’t a question. Clara nods.

“I’m sorry.” And he means it, Clara can see it in his face, how it falls, how his intense eyes spark with sadness and guilt.

“Why did you come back?”

He hesitates and she wonders why he hasn’t already told her about Galifrey, excited and happy like a child in the candy store and then it dawns to her.

“You didn’t found it, did you?”

The Doctor still can’t look at her face.

“You lied.”

The Doctor flinches as she punches his shoulder and glares at her.Clara turns her back on him.

“So did you.”

The corner of Clara’s mouth twitches.

“Guess we’re even,” she says as she rubs her knuckles.

Inside her everything is turning upside down. Clara isn’t exactly angry that he had lied to her, but that he invented this lie because he thought she was happy with Danny now and that he could just leave her. She is angry that she had just done the same. She lets out a sigh and she just isn’t sure what to do. She is so happy that he’s back but she’s so angry at the same time.

“So, do I think right that you don’t want to come with me then?”

Her heart skips a beat. She turns and stares at him with wide eyes. After a moment she blinks and straightens up.

“Tell me first, what was there when you followed the coordinates she gave you?”

He sighs and turns away. “Nothing. Just nothing. As if there had never been an entire inhabited planet at all.”

Clara can feel the pain and frustration radiating from him.

“But it has been there once. And you don’t know if it’s not still out there somewhere.”

She walks towards the TARDIS.

“No, you’re wrong.”

After a second of hesitation and disbelieve he follows her and opens the door of the TARDIS. Clara walks inside and needs a moment to take it all in. That the Doctor is back and that she will travel with him again. She turns and smiles at him.

“We’ll find it and you can go home. Just don’t give up.”

The Doctor walks to the console.

“For a long time now I doidn’t have a place that I could call home. A place that I could return to. It’s always been people.”

Clara isn’t sure if she understands.

“That’s why I came back. I came home.”

Clara closes the distance between them and stands close to him and watches him a little surprised.

She reaches for his face, cups his cheek and leans in. “Welcome home then.”

Clara is sure he thinks he knows what she’s going to do, kissing his cheek like she had done before. Surely he doesn’t expect it when she aims for his mouth instead. It feels a little weird at first, because he looks older now, he could be her father or grandfather, but then again, he is over a millennium old and that hadn’t bothered her before. It isn’t weird in a bad way anyway. It is just a brief touch of lips, a gesture of appreciation, gratitude and affection.

When she pulls away her face is flushed and she turns away, leaving the Doctor a little baffled. Then he clears his throat.

“Well, Merry Christmas.”

They smile at each other and start the TARDIS together, coordinates set on the north pole.

“I want you to meet a friend of mine.”

 

 


End file.
